Page not availableHari Seldon wrote: Pound Could Collapse Within Weeks, Predicts Billionaire Financier Jim Rogers, http://bit.ly/bwALNt
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John Williams reported that inflation rose in the U.S. from 9.7% in December to 9.8% in January – a far cry from the fantasy-figures with which the U.S. government hopes to continue to deceive the world. However, those numbers should be rising much faster.
It is not just simple economics, but simple arithmetic that when you increase the supply of something at the fastest rate in history that the price must fall (and fall rapidly). This is true whether we are referring to the massive, over-supply of U.S. Treasuries, or the huge glut of greenbacks, themselves. When the “price” of U.S. dollars falls, this is the definition of inflation. A loaf of bread doesn't suddenly get more “valuable”, but rather the currency we use to buy that loaf of bread is becoming steadily more worthless.
The only reason why this has not already been translated to soaring price-inflation (i.e. double-digits or greater) is because the Oligarchs and the U.S. government have demonstrated that they are willing to sacrifice all the rest of the U.S. economy – solely to prevent the banksters from drowning in their own financial feces.
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The report was there, I saw it yesterday.shravan wrote:Page not availableHari Seldon wrote: Pound Could Collapse Within Weeks, Predicts Billionaire Financier Jim Rogers, http://bit.ly/bwALNt
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Financier Jim Rogers denies saying pound will collapse
"I did not know about this press release. I didn't say those things," Rogers told MarketWatch.com in a phone interview from Singapore Friday.
of the real recession, with more Lehman-scale disasters and a fallout which won’t stop until the underlying malaise is genuinely cured.” he added.Billionaire financier Jim Rogers has predicted that the British Pound could completely collapse within weeks, sending shockwaves throughout the global economy and heralding the beginning of a downturn that would make the recent economic crisis look tame in comparison.
“Other currencies aren’t strong and the Euro has real problems, with cracks much wider than Greece beginning to show,” Rogers said.
“But it’s the Pound that’s most vulnerable. In real terms, it’s already devalued against virtually every currency barring the Zimbabwean dollar and it’s especially exposed over the weeks running up to the UK election. In a basket of currencies, the Pound is potentially a basket case. And that will put Britain in an extremely bad position for the shakedown.”
“The last few months have seen a ‘false bounce’, shorn up by massive short-term injections of government underwriting,” Rogers, the former business partner of George Soros, said.
“But it can’t last. We’ve been applying temporary sticking plasters, not long-term cures. Later this year we’ll see the start
Rogers was quoted in a press release ahead of a keynote appearance at next month’s Global Trading Day seminar in Westminster along with investment advisor Dr Marc Faber and British trader Vince Stanzione.
ECRI’s latest study reveals that the job market conditions for key segments of the population are far better than most realize. The study challenges the gloomy consensus about the job market outlook, and has major monetary policy implications.
WASHINGTON – Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, suggested Friday the organization might one day be called on to provide countries with a global reserve currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar.
"That day has not yet come, but I think it is intellectually healthy to explore these kinds of ideas now," he said in a speech on the future mandate of the 186-nation Washington-based lending organization.
Thats easy, ain't it??. Before Barrack Obama’s next televised speech, prepare your “Bullshit Bingo” card by drawing a square. I find that 5″ x 5″ is a good size — and dividing it into columns –five across and five down. That will give you 25 1-inch blocks.
2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:
Restored our reputation
Strategic fit
Let me be clear
Make no mistake
Back from the brink
Signs of recovery
Out of the loop
Benchmark
Job creation
Fiscal restraint
Win-win
Affordable health care
Previous Administration
At the end of the day
Empower (or empowerment)
Touch base
Mindset
Bipartisan
Trust
Inherited as in “I inherited this mess”
Relief for working families
Unprecedented
Accountable (or held to account)
Free market
Reform
Players can make substitutions to this list, but only one phrase can be used in any one block. Alternatives include:
Change (as in “change you can believe in)
Universal health care
Brought the economy back from the brink
3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.
4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout ”BULLSHIT!”
Testimonials from past satisfied “Bullshit Bingo” players:
”I had been listening to the speech for only five minutes when I won.” - Jack W., Boston
”My attention span during speeches has improved dramatically.” – David D., Florida
”What a gas! Speeches will never be the same for me after my first win.” - Bill R., New York City
“The atmosphere was tense in the last speech as 14 of us waited for the fifth box.” – Ben G., Denver
“The speaker was stunned as eight of us screamed “BULLSHIT!” for the third time in two hours.” – Harry A. Chantilly
As perceptive as it is obvious. Read it all onlee.Over the past few days, a number of major European banks have announced earnings results. Two of the most dismal results were registered at the British company Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and at Germany’s Commerzbank. However, the similarity ends there because, while Commerzbank investment bankers received no bonus, the bankers at government-controlled RBS received billions of dollars in bonuses. In my view, this differences highlight a cultural divide on compensation between financial services-dominated countries like the U.S. and the U.K. and industry-driven economies like Germany.
This series on the Federal Reserve made few years before the current economic fiasco unfolded makes remarkably accurate predictions. One prediction i remember is a move towards an international currency which it predicts will be short lived.Head of IMF proposes new reserve currency
Very interesting interactive map and stats of median income disparity across cities and towns.It’s no secret we live in a country of haves and have-nots. But did you know there’s a California city where nearly 29 percent of households earn more than $200,000 a year, while in one Pennsylvania city, not a single household makes that amount?
Read it all. As for commentary, IMHO Tyler Durden over at zero hedge says it best:With apologies to Charles Dickens, that could well be the start A Tale of Two Cities if his 1859 masterpiece had been written today about the economic quality of modern American life. After all, we’re living in a time when economists talk hopefully about a recovery, but the recession still holds the nation in its merciless grip.
Key indicators tell this unhappy story. The national unemployment rate might have dropped from the double-digit level it hit in December, but the January rate of 9.7 percent is nothing to cheer about. Average wages have declined for two consecutive quarters, something that last occurred in the late 1970s.
But the pain is not spread equally. Many areas are being battered by the full force of the Great Recession—Detroit and Phoenix are prime examples—yet others are remarkably comfortable.
One thing is certain: if you live in any of the 5 poorest cities, which in addition to Reading include Camden, New Jersey; Flint, Michigan; Brownsville, Texas; and Gary, Indiana (and Detroit, which is sixth from the bottom), the last thing you care about it the prevailing home price around Fashion Island, or level of the S&P - you are likely much more concerned about the amount of ammunition in your garage.
An interesting comment:With the dramatic emergence of intra-EU bickering between various "banana-eating countries" and "tax cheats", it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the banana trees. While it is subjective to say who owes whom what, one thing that is very objective, is whose money is critical to sustaining the European Union. And here there is no doubt: without Germany, the EU would not exist. The country, which receives €78 billion from the EU annually, pays out more than double that, or €164 billion, for a net impact of (€1,045) per capita. Surely the Germans would be just as happy to see this money retained by their economy instead of going to assorted hangers-on. And speaking of the latter, one of the biggest recipients, with a net benefit of €2,284 per person, is Greece, which pays just €15 billion a year to the EU but receives nearly triple, or €40 billion. We wonder just how Greece will plug that particular hole should the EU dissolve after the recent escalation in rhetoric threatens to royally piss off the Germans.
but it's much more complicated. Germany has a massive intra-EU trade surplus, clearly helped by the monetary union and the associated reduction of trade frictions. Would they be able to export as much to Europe in the absence of monetary union? Are you telling us they are acting irrationally by perpetuating a system in which they do not benefit?
It's worth exploring the deeper German motives and incentives in order for us all here on ZH to figure out how this is going to resolve itself.
Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
- Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
- Why the early bird gets the worm;
- Life isn't always fair;
- and maybe it was my fault.
Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).
His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual
harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.
It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses, and criminals received better treatment than their victims.
Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.
Common Sense finally gave up the will to live after a.woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.
He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers:
I Know My Rights
I Want It Now
Someone Else Is To Blame
I'm A Victim
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.
The $64 million question is what (if anything) will they do about it?Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.
Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come.
Something I realized when in massaland. Its one thing to proclaim 'our people are our assets' etc. Its another to pay benefits, obey onerous regulations and take risks (re litigation etc) over and above wages. It was becoming a burden employing the khans in the khanate for low skill jobs.Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.
{And which they so far have failed to do. The Repuglycans have held out, in another suicidal Gingrich kinda wager, IMHO}
“American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”
Read it all.During periods of American economic expansion in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the number of private-sector jobs increased about 3.5 percent a year, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a research firm. During expansions in the 1980s and ’90s, jobs grew just 2.4 percent annually. And during the last decade, job growth fell to 0.9 percent annually.
“The pace of job growth has been getting weaker in each expansion,” Mr. Achuthan said. “There is no indication that this pattern is about to change.”
On average, only two-thirds of unemployed people received state-provided unemployment checks last year, according to the Labor Department. The rest either exhausted their benefits, fell short of requirements or did not apply.
“You have very large sets of people who have no social protections,” said Randy Albelda, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. “They are landing in this netherworld.”
“We have a work-based safety net without any work,” said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “People with more education and skills will probably figure something out once the economy picks up. It’s the ones with less education and skills: that’s the new poor.”
most pharma/biotech cos--pfizer, merck, j&j, etc, even monsanto--have long standing and well defined computational chem/bio r&d components and spend quite some time/funds on folks who know, e.g., how to rapidly screen millions of chemical compounds down to a few leads. the billion dollar price tag is largely due to the rigorous, and some say over-regulated, FDA requirements for the three phases of drug testing/development in the US such that it takes 10-15 yrs for a candidate to reach the market.sugriva wrote:Well the reason drug development time takes $1 billion is because pharma companies refuse to use computer based simulations to determine whether a drug will work or not.Since new drugs cost roughly $1 billion each to develop and bring to market globally,
Yawn.March 1 (Bloomberg) -- While the eyes of the world focus on Greece’s debt crisis, investors in Edinburgh are busy preparing for the U.K. to be next.
Turcan Connell, which caters to rich families, expects the pound to lose between 20 percent and 30 percent against the dollar once investors turn their sights on Britain as the government sells a record amount of debt. Sterling slid to a 10- month low versus the U.S. currency today.
“Alarm bells were ringing in Greece for a long time and when it happened, it happened very quickly,” Haig Bathgate, head of strategy at Turcan Connell, said at the company’s offices in the Scottish capital. “The U.K. is in a similar predicament. It could be hit very hard.”
Money managers in Edinburgh, where investment decisions have been made on behalf of insurers, pensioners and the wealthy for two centuries, are maneuvering to protect assets from the U.K. economy as it limps out of its worst recession on record.
Bruce Stout, whose Murray International Trust Plc in Edinburgh has doubled over the past five years, said the chance of a plummeting pound are “better than even” and his biggest holdings are in Asia and Latin America. He called sterling a “very vulnerable currency.”
...
The U.K.’s budget deficit is roughly the same as Greece’s, both exceeding 12 percent of economic output. Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s said last week they may cut Greece’s credit rating as the five-month-old government struggles to curb spending and control its debt.
...
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government in December increased its planned gilt sales for the financial year ending this month to a record 225.1 billion pounds from the 220 billion pounds announced in April. Moody’s Investors Service said in December the U.K. may “test the Aaa boundaries.”
that'll be the day lungi dances will burst forth in 'em colored former colonies....beech sadak bhangra onlee. 
jai hoax jai hoax.Its like those blue collar Republicans and rich doctors who complain about Obama ramming healthcare thru!SwamyG wrote:^^^^
The entire system is messed up, going after one or two large fishes is only symbolic. I have seen people arguing or raising the "retention of talent" argument when GS CEO took the $9million stock based bonus, a sharp decline from $68million the previous year. They were worried companies would not be able to retain talent. No, people who make these arguments are not millionaires, they are aam junta in the financial, supply-chain, itiyadi sectors.
I begin to see where R.Vaidya was coming from, when he wrote some time back on the need for the of the West for India and others to rise.
In the middle of the lecture he has a slide on what caused the mess. he says three things:Hari Seldon wrote:Hadn't seen that particular video before, Ramana garu.ramana wrote:Hari, I dont know if you have seen this video
Are Math models the cause of Financial Crisis in Global Economy? Dr. Andrew Lo.
Very good exposition. He is Prof of Financial Engg at MIT,
Taleb and party have been hammering at precisely this blind reliance on modeling in the social sciences that cannot comprehend black swans only.
ha ha...ramana wrote:Its like those blue collar Republicans and rich doctors who complain about Obama ramming healthcare thru!
that is after nearly 13 months of debates or whatever they want to call that. The word "ramming through" conjures a cartoon bubble where things were hastily drawn up 2-3 days ago and then procedural tactics are now used to get things done in a hurry. The issue has been in the public airwaves for more than a year.Being unemployed is tougher than ever as people are struggling to find jobs longer than before. But another segment of our society that is sinking even lower. Homeless Americans live in tents in the woods outside of New York City, as crowded shelters cannot accommodate them. The youngest member of this homeless commune, 21-year-old Rob, was laid off when the economic crisis began, and he doesn't see any possibility to land a job soon.
Excellent points all.If you decide to undertake the risk of illness on personal cost, it would be far more costlier to manage. The free market system cannot work when the service providers have severe entry barriers to their market, plus current economies of scale will provide better leverage to the end customers. What is also required is good legislation to keep insurers from abusing their right to deny coverage. Any number of insurers can come up, but they will never be accountable to the public (unless they are shareholders).
ha ha...the utopian vision that goes along with the ideology of Govt expansion and usurpation of private rights always aims for an unattainable goal: EQUALITY.
those private rights that you talk about was given in the first place by Government.
And little beyond and read what Thomas Paine itiyadi also had to say about government.i think it's about time that the old Federalist debates of late-18th and early 19th century come to the forefront again